Also notable is the fact that Iraqi television and radio shows haven’t devoted much time at all to discussing the presidential race. In the past there had been special guests and televised debates on the subject.
Iraqis used to be so interested in the US elections because it was in the 1990s that the US first put more foreign policy focus on Iraq, explains Mohammed Yas, a professor of political science at Nahrain University in Baghdad. First there were sanctions after Iraq’s invasion of neighbouring Kuwait and then in 2003, there was the US-led invasion of the country that toppled the regime of former leader Saddam Hussein and sent the country spinning toward civil war.
But now, Yas noted, “there’s a new relationship between the two countries. Things have normalized.”
Interestingly local politicians also seem to agree with the average Iraqi on the street. The various political parties have refrained from putting out press statements or commenting on the US elections.
“It is because of the change in the nature of the relationship between Iraq and the US,” noted Ihsan al-Awadi, an MP for the State of Law list, which is part of the ruling coalition headed by current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “When there were more than 150,000 US soldiers in Iraq, the US used to dominate the country’s political decision making and its security. That’s why Iraqis were so desperate to know what was going on there. But now there’s a more balanced relationship and we have friendly ties with the US.”
“Iraq is no longer among the US’ priorities and the US is no longer among the Iraqi priorities,” Muayad al-Tayeb, the Baghdad-based spokesperson for the Kurdish voting bloc in Iraq's federal parliament, explains. Additionally al-Tayeb believed he had also detected a kind of apathy in ordinary Iraqis relationship towards the US. “That’s why they all think it’s unimportant,” he suggested.
(Source: Niqash)
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